Singpost shares sincere apology for service failure, promises vigour

Singapore Post (SingPost) has not had the easiest end, or start to the year. It recently got embroiled into service issues raised by customers. In December last year, a customer took to social media to express his frustration over a postman who did not wait for the knock on the door to be answered and left a letter for self-collection. Prior to that, according to Chinese newspaper Lianhe Wanbao, a postman was assigned to distribute flyers between 26 November and 4 December 2018. The customer who had requested for the flyer distribution did not receive any on his mailbox and raised the issue to SingPost. In response to the query, a SingPost staff sent images of flyers which were distributed as ordered. Only much later, the customer found out that the flyers in the images had the same markings and seemed to be duplicated images. In a statement to Marketing, a SingPost spokesperson said that it is taking a serious look at the issues that has surfaced recently and is finding ways to improve immediately on them.  "You may have heard about our service failures in the past few weeks. First of all, we extend our most sincere apologies to everyone who has been inconvenienced by us in any way. We hear you, and agree that your experience with SingPost could have been better. It would be fair to state, that we have failed to live up to expectations, in recent times," the statement added. The spokesperson told Marketing that it processes an average of three million mail items a day. The November-December peak season was a "tremendously" busy period for its staff members, as the spokesperson said, adding that its postmen had to make an average of an additional 20 doorstep deliveries daily due to the increased postage volumes. "All postmen and delivery staff are also working beyond their usual hours to help process and support these volumes. We hired extra resources, recalled personnel and activated teams from the corporate office on Saturdays just to meet the demand as well but our service quality still suffered as a result," she added. In addition, the company said that being in the service industry, it depends on its front-line staff members to provide the "best experiences" for its customers and it said that inevitably, there will be employees who may not act in the best interests of the company. "We have experienced service failures due to the individual actions of a few employees. We are aware that this not only reflects badly on our organisation but undermines the hard-work, commitment and dedication that the majority of our Postal staff are displaying every single day. Such behaviour will not be tolerated. While this aims to provide some background on the challenges experienced, these are not excuses for the issues that have been raised. We value the integrity and trust we have built as an organisation over 160 years and are now focused on rebuilding that trust," she said. "We, at SingPost, value our position in the local community and acknowledge we only have that honour because of the support of our customers – you are the core of our business. We assure you that we will be vigorous in reviewing and revising our operational procedures, so that you will receive your letters, packages and parcels without delay, without hassle, and most importantly, without frustration. Please bear with us, as we seek your patience to transform and serve you better. This remains our commitment to all of our customers and we would like to thank you for your feedback. From all of us at SingPost, we are sorry for the inconvenience and hardship caused," she added. Just last year, SingPost issued an apology for an incident that saw one of its mailmen throwing away stacks of letters at a condominium. This came after a viral video made its rounds on the internet which saw a member of the public confronting the postman over his actions. The spokesperson added that SingPost has since retrieved the mail and will be processing them. It added that it would be looking into the postman’s claim made on his work environment.